Articles Posted in Police

I live in Ennis and frequently take Interstate 45 North to Dallas. There is never less than 2 police cars hiding between State Highway 34 and Interstate 20 looking for speeders. Most often these cops lurk on bridges and on ramps hiding from unsuspecting motorists.

On I-45 The speed limit goes from 65 to 60 in various spots. However, if you travel less than 70 you will be frequently passed by traffic. It is obvious that the Speed Limit on I-45 has no basis in promoting safety or in driver reality. There is nothing dangerous about driving 75 on I-45. Not that I would ever intentionally break our State’s divinely inspired traffic laws.

I blogged earlier that I wanted to use open records to highlight the I-45 speed trap and the shameless money grab by local municipalities. I often see Garrett, Palmer, and/or Ferris police on I-45.

RateMyCop.com lets citizens rate and review police officers. Some Texas prosecutors don’t like the idea. I think it’s great. Police have a troubled history of policiing themselves. More information helps everyone. RMC could prevent future Tulias from happening.

Here is an interview with founder Gino Sesto.

1. Name/Background/Resume
Gino Sesto. 37yrs old, living in Culver City, CA. 15+ year Advertising background.
2. How did RMC get started?
Having a dinner with a good friend 7 or 8 months ago, and the topic turned to traffic tickets. We spoke about our experiences for at least a half hour. It dawned on me the next day that there is a website here. People all have experiences with officers, both good and bad. The best part is they remember them like it happened just yesterday. After doing some research and realizing I could get lists of names from the departments themselves we decided to make the site. We mailed over 1,000 requests to departments around the country and received over 500 back. I learned that over 40,000,000 traffic tickets are given out every year. On each traffic ticket there is a line for the officer to fill out. His/Her name and id number. Aha! That’s what we need. People keep those tickets for at least 6 months, so the data is there, and certainly the users are there. Everyone has an opinion on those tickets, and they usually tell all their immediate friends about the ticket.
3. Would RMC be possible without open records laws?
Absolutely, the open record laws only allowed us to seed the “kitty”. Without the 140k names that we have now, the press wouldn’t have bothered with us, but eventually the users would have grown the database to that point. Just 5 days ago we launched the ability for users to add to our database, and we have already had over 400 names submitted. Getting the names from the police departments only got the website to grow faster than it would have without the names

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Drug dog expert Steven Nicely helped to defeat a possession case in Nebraska. Based on Nicely’s testimony the court found a drug dog to not be reliable. Steven was kind enough to grant me an interview.

1. Tell us about the case.

Case involved a dog team from the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office Ne, in which approximately 10 pounds of cocaine was seized. The vehicle was stopped because the officer/dog handler believed some defect with its temporary plate. Handler spent over 30 minutes interviewing the driver and passenger before deploying the dog. This was not necessary the entire incident could have been complete in less than 10 minutes after contact with the driver.